Sign Up for Swamplot Emails:

Hobby Airport

The Gulfgate-Mall-seeded TIRZ that absorbed many of the commercial corridors around Hobby Airport back in 2014 has been weighing plans for redeveloping the acquired zone, working with the Houston-Galveston Area Council through the organization’s agreeably-named Livable Centers program. A few public workshops were held last month; a reader tells Swamplot that the management district’s consultants have also been interviewing area real estate folks as they come up with ideas for new developments to suggest. The next workshop is planned for the evening of Wednesday, July 13th; the district is pushing an online survey in the meanwhile.

Presentation slides from the most recent workshop included the map below of sidewalks in the area being studied (roughly bounded by I-45, Almeda Genoa Rd., Mykawa Rd., and Dixie Dr., as shown above) — roads marked in green have new sidewalks, yellow lines highlight sidewalks rated by the district as good, red shows sidewalks rated as poor, and brown shows roads with sidewalks rated as missing:

Some $156 million is being spent by Southwest Airlines to do up the previously domesticated Hobby Airport into this shapely international hub. In February, city council approved a kind of build-to-suit agreement that would allow Southwest to add 5 gates to its terminal on the west side of the airport for international flights — Mayor Parker said at the time that she was even considering adding that adjective to ol’ Hobby’s name — as well as introduce a customs inspection hub, redo the roadways to and from, and add a 2,500-space parking garage.

Yesterday, city council approved an agreement that will allow Southwest Airlines to go ahead with plans to expand Hobby Airport for international flights. The short-pants airline will foot the $150 million bill to add up to 280,000 sq. ft. to the terminal, including a new concourse and ticket counter, six security lanes, five gates, and a customs inspection hub. The plan, pictured above, also includes restructured roadways and a new parking garage with 2,500 spaces, mutating one of the wings of an airport designed as though it might be itself ready for takeoff:

The long-rumored fifth Hong Kong Market will soon take over this former flea-market building (on the right in the photo) just southwest of the intersection of Airport Blvd. and the Gulf Freeway, a reader reports. Work is already going on inside the building, which was originally a Sam’s Club. The 2 pagoda-themed strip buildings flanking the building’s parking lot that were put up a few years ago are still mostly empty — only a pho restaurant and a nail salon have moved in. The Pulgita con Aire, aka the National Marketplace flea market, now has its own building with an attached parking garage directly south of its former home (barely visible in the background between the 2 buildings), along Mosley Rd. at 9820 Gulf Fwy. D. Back in February, the owners of the Hong Kong Market agreed to pay $1.8 million in back wages and a $200,000 fine for underpaying the Houston grocery chain’s workers and misleading investigators about its labor practices.

Acute airport-urinal observer and SnapStream CEO Rakesh Agrawal catches this unlikely warning posted in a men’s restroom at the newish Southwest Airlines terminal at Hobby. The text below the Dept. of Homeland Security logo at the top of the urinal reads: